IOGEAR announced on Monday the launch of several different SATA cards for Macintoshes, including a PCI-Express eSATA low profile internal/external port card and a PCI-Express eSATA low profile two external port card.
These cards are compatible with with the PowerMac G5 series (PCI-X) and the Intel Mac Pro (PCI Express).
"IOGEARis new product line provides the ideal solution, as it facilitates data transfers at speeds up to 3 Gbps -- six times quicker than USB 2.0. The SATA PCI and PCI-Express solutions also add RAID (redundant array of independent disks) capabilities to existing ... desktops, enabling data back-up and transfer performance increases unavailable with other connections.
1. The eSATA 3.0 Gbps PCI-Express low profile card with one internal and one external port is priced at US$46.95.
2. The eSATA 3.0 Gbps PCI-Express low profile card with two external ports is priced at US$46.95.
 IOGEAR RAID5 eSATA card |
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3. The eSATA 1.5 Gbps PCI-X low profile card with two external ports is priced at US$37.95.
4. The eSATA 3.0 Gbps PCI-Express card with RAID5 and two external ports is priced at US$69.99.
[UPDATE, 12/5/07: An IOGEAR representative responded to TMOis RAID 5 inquiries as follows: "Our SATA line of PCIe expansion cards is supported on G5 and later machines running 10.4.8 and later. The drivers are not native to OS X and must be installed separately. The software does support RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 0+1 on the Mac. In order to make use of levels 5 or 0+1 you must have a port multiplier which at the moment we are not planning to sell separately. Because of this I have made the suggestion that the cards not be advertised as supporting 5 or 0+1 until we do carry the multipliers."]